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This post is a while overdue. As I am sure you know, Medecins Sans Frontier launched Condition: Critical this year. It is a website to bring together the many stories of victims of the war, assemble video and photo tools for activism and to leave messages of support. That’s right … no money, just a letter and awareness.
As part of the effort, my mate Ben has had his hand in the first four videos pushed out to the world. Ben’s summary of this conflict and humanitarian situation;
“Its the world’s deadliest conflict since the second world war and yet the majority of people have never heard of it. According to the IRC at least at least 5 million Congolese have died in more than a decade of conflict sparked off by the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Most of the deaths are linked to a lack of medical facilities as the ability to access medical care in Eastern Congo has crumbled with the war.”
Ben’s team trained the comms people out in the field to gather stories and then they edited it to relay the stories in a powerful, respectful way. First hand tales and simple honest images. No gore, only testimony.
Drawing the War is the troubling tale of a boy carried away by opposition forces and set to work.
There are four videos from the MSF Condition Critical campaign on duckrabbit vimeo profile. The other three are Mishoka’s Story, Bahati’s Story, and Francoise’s Story.
So it seems that Ben has had some success in challenging and changing the public relations that non-profits and charities have to their global audience. Now all he, us and the people of Congo require it awareness, effort and mindshare.
Ben has asked us to do one or four of four things: 1. Leave a message of solidarity on the map; 2. Twitter about it and link to it on Facebook (for Twitter use #conditioncritical); 3. Embed one of the video’s on their blogs; 4. Write something about the project. Tewfic, Mark, Charlie, Mediastorm, Daniel and Boing have done their bit. Pass it along.
WHILE WE ARE ON MSF
I also recommend following the MSF Photoblog, managed by Bruno Decock (I think) as it endeavours (commendably) in public to deliver relevant balanced, effective, non-sensational and representative photographs of Africa. Not easy!
Photographers Dominic Nahr, Julie Remy, Martin Beaulieu, Robin Meldrum, Yasuyoshi Chiba and Cedric Gerbehaye have been involved in the collaborations with MSF for Condition Critical.
© Andrew Jackson. Black Child, Gulugetu, Cape Town, 2006
I have no answers. I have just asked for them. We will get answers but they may be outnumbered by more questions.
I have no answers. And yet, two things struck me this week. They both go to the heart of the necessary cynicism AND optimism toward the photojournalist’s craft. These two contributions are contrary in tone and yet I can agree with them both.
I have no answers.
ANDREW JACKSON
Firstly, from Andrew Jackson and his ‘WrittenByLight‘ blog.
A 4OD episode of the Art Show entitled If asked a number of contemporary poets to produce modern (re)workings of Kipling’s famous poem If. Jackson was compelled to create his own and “perhaps speak of [his] own misgivings of documentary photography”.
FINBARR O’REILLY
In answering such doubts, Finbarr O’Reilly on the Reuters blog gives an honest and balanced appraisal of the global coverage (and his part in it) of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Even as Democratic Republic of Congo’s war-related death toll rose above a staggering five million, making it the most lethal conflict since World War Two, the war in Central Africa remained largely unnoticed and under-reported.
and
The media could enjoy coffee and croissants for breakfast, drive up to the front-line fighting or the squalid camps home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Congolese, then return to file stories and pictures in time for dinner and a night at the bar.
and
There were so many photographers in Congo last year that there’s a running joke at photojournalism festivals and competitions this year about viewers and judges having to sit through “yet another picture story from Congo.”
and
But at least Congo, that beautiful, terrible place, became a highly visible story. It’s easy to be cynical about the idea of a devastating conflict suddenly becoming a trendy cause, but the important thing is that people are finally paying attention to one of the world’s worst catastrophes. U.S. President Barack Obama referred to Congo’s troubles in speeches, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton visited Goma in August and said she was moved by the plight of Congo’s women, many of whom are victims of extreme sexual violence and mass rape.
The temperance of O’Reilly’s opinion – in spite of his closeness to the events – is impressive.
Maybe the foil against the consumption of images of distant plight is to insist that the photographer’s voice and experience is always carried with them. Better still, the voice of those depicted is carried with the images. That way there can be no doubt of the actual conditions in which the images were created.
Finbarr O’Reilly has spent many years on stories in DRC, including eight specific photo series relating to aspects of Congolese experience.
© Finbarr O'Reilly / Reuters. From the series 'Congo Hair'
Prison Photography 